‘No one would ever think he’s the killer’
When Patricia Kinsman picked up the phone Thursday morning, police told her that her brother who had been missing since June was dead.
“I think I just went comatose for a minute,” Kinsman said, remembering that although she was supposed to be babysitting, she couldn’t help but block out the outside the world and repeat the words “oh my God.” Her hope that she’d one day see her brother again was “taken away in a breath.”
Kinsman was joined by her sister Karen Coles for a press conference at the 519 Community Centre only hours after the 66- year- old man accused of murdering their brother made his first court appearance Friday.
Bruce McArthur was charged with the first- degree murders of Selim Esen and Andrew Kinsman, two men who disappeared from the Village, a downtown Toronto neighbourhood that caters to the city’s LGBTQ community, on April 16 and June 26 respectively. Police believe McArthur is responsible for several other deaths, as well. As of Friday afternoon, he had been reportedly linked with the deaths of two other people.
McArthur, dressed in a blue zip- up sweater, sat hunched over in a glass box and was only in court long enough to hear the Crown ask for and receive a publication ban.
Police said McArthur had a longer- term relationship with Kinsman, 49, which they described as being “sexual.” McArthur’s relationship with Esen is still unknown.
Packed inside the courtroom were members of the city’s LGBTQ community. Alphonso King, said he knew Kinsman through his volunteer work at the People with Aids Toronto nonprofit foundation. King, 50, described Kinsman as being “very well- known in the activist community” and as someone who “really cared about the community.”
King went to court Friday, he said, to look McArthur in the eyes.
“They say the eyes are the window of the soul, so I wanted to see what was in those eyes,” King said, although he saw nothing from McArthur’s cold expression.
King may not have been able to read McArthur’s eyes — but the accused’s appearance was a different story.
“He’s an ol der white gentleman and he played Santa Claus in the mall,” King said. “No one would ever think he’s the killer.
“And that’s the perfect disguise.”
After McArthur, who worked as a landscape designer and occasional mall Santa, was escorted out of the courtroom, police intensified their search of the four properties he owned in Toronto and one in Madoc, Ont. He primarily lived in Toronto’s Thorncliffe Park neighbourhood. No bodies have been found, police said.
McArthur was remanded into police custody and will appear again on Feb. 14 via video link. The charges remain unproven in court.
Patricia Kinsman and Coles weren’t in court Friday morning but said they’re waiting to have the same experience of staring him down. Neither one recognizes McArthur because Andrew Kinsman didn’t often keep them up-to-date on his relationships. “He’s nothing to me,” Patricia Kinsman said of McArthur. “I have no desire to talk to him.”
Coles added she was looking forward to a trial so that at least, “mentally, I can spit on him.”
The pair fondly remembers their brother from his younger days. Coles said Andrew wanted to be a paleontologist growing up and remembers hiding a cow’s leg bone in the family’s backyard for him to find.
Patricia Kinsman remembers her brother as a young boy with long golden locks and bangs who was fond of tie-dye shirts.
They spent months searching for him in the ravines and parks that surround the Village “in the rain, in the heat and in the snow.” Most of t he community criticized the police for not doing enough in the cases of Kinsman, Esen and other gay men who have gone missing. For months, the Village neighbourhood feared that a serial killer was in their midst, but each time the possibility was raised, it was met with denial by police. One month after last saying there was no evidence pointing to a serial killer, they charged McArthur.
The f amily, however, t hanked t he police, defending them from the harsh criticism.
“I think seven months is pretty quick to get a killer when supposedly there was no video surveillance, ( Andrew) didn’t tell anyone where he went, there were no clues,” Patricia Kinsman said. “He just didn’t come home.”
The family plans to lay low and wait for police to find Kinsman’s remains before planning a memorial. Both admit that they didn’t have the highest hopes their brother would return because they found his 17-yearold cat — alone and without food for three days — in his apartment. But even after their worst fears were confirmed, Coles admits it’s still difficult to come to terms with reality.
“On some days, I just go stand in the bathroom and cry,” she said. “There’s a hole in my chest. There’s pain.
“You go on. You have to go on. What other choice do you have?”